19 May 2008

Marketing in the public sector faces challenges both a regional and national level. In particular, there is emphasis on performance management and the adoption of an approach to business that parallels that in the profit making private sector. As public organisations aim to produce impacts on their external environment, their performance needs to be measured, not only at the internal level but also at the external level. This is the reason why marketing approaches and their specific tools have a key role to play in the management and measurement of public performance.

The creation of initiatives between public and private sectors, involving partnerships and joint ventures companies, and the emphasis on changing attitudes and behaviour in society, have focused attention on making strategic decisions in increasingly market-oriented ways. A successful adoption of a market orientation allows the public sector to become better positioned to exploit emerging opportunities. Recognition of opportunities that exist, the marketing orientation required to exploit these opportunities and the enabling strategies demanded are key to the future development of public sector organisations in the 21st century.

Theoretical and empirically-based papers are being sought for this special issue which will explore to what extent marketing can, should and indeed must, improve the customer orientation within the public sector and the ways in which this goal can best be achieved. The exploration of key marketing challenges and the identification of best practice in differing marketing contexts are highly topical and important. Papers adopting a theoretical approach are welcome provided they deal with new marketing tools and approaches. However, priority will be given to papers which concentrate on empirical researches (cases studies). The general theme of the special issue will be around how public sector executives plan strategic marketing activities to increase performance within their organisations.

This special edition aims to inform readers on the processes and the consequences of adopting marketing approaches within public sector. It will focus on “marketisation” (increase performance in service delivery) and social marketing in order to link these integrated marketing approaches to performance that relies not only on promotion and communication, but also on the will to identify the needs of their public.

Areas that may provide an appropriate focus include (but are not necessarily limited to):

Diversity of the demand the public manager has to face (with consumers, users, voter, taxpayers). Which marketing tools are more adapted to cope with this specific demand?

Market segmentation, targeting and positioning approaches - traditional or new approaches more adapted to public services.

How new public services are adapted to meet the needs of a specific demand

Analysis of users' satisfaction within public sector organisations.

Targeting specific publics to reach social goals.

How marketing tools are used and adapted in order to reach performance in changing social behaviours?

Value based marketing

Innovation and improved service delivery through public-private partnerships and networks or co-operation with other public sector providers

Measuring short and long term future demand for services

Effective delivery of customer service to reflect and reinforce the desired corporate brand image

Methods of improving customer service

Issues regarding pricing of services in the public sector

Marketing communication approaches

Social marketing in practice

E-marketing and the public sector customer.

Important DatesSubmission of full paper before: 1 November, 2008Notification of acceptance before: 15 February, 2008Submission of final and revised manuscripts: 1 April, 2009

As organisations increasingly rely on computer networks for wired and wireless communications for various business transactions, information systems (IS) security plays a pivotal role in business success. The purpose of this Special Issue is to encourage the development of quality research in IS security in the context of Indian businesses that have local as well as global impact. It will explore how information technology solutions and IS policies could be developed and deployed amidst the social, cultural and economic diversities of India to facilitate secured business communications. The Special Issue will include original papers on theoretical as well as practical case studies conducted in IS security that have implications on businesses and societies in India.

The potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Theories and empirical studies on the development of IS security models in Internet and distributed systems

The deployment of IT solutions as a countermeasure for security breaches in Indian businesses

Enhancing secured business communications through wired and wireless systems that are interconnected in distributed and networked environments

IS security policies, implementation challenges and governance in India and the use of international information security management standards

IS security issues related to service sectors such as education that include e-learning environments in India

Identifying the social, cultural and economic issues that have implications on IS security policies, training and enforcement

Best practices of privacy protection, security economics and risk assessment

Recent trends in cybercrime that impact Indian businesses and emerging technologies in intrusion detection systems being adopted

16 May 2008

The 100 page Inderscience Journals Catalogue 2008, giving comprehensive details of all current and forthcoming journals and other publications, is now available as a downloadable PDF file (5Mb).There is also a zipped version (4Mb)

Functional informatics and personalised medicine are interactive disciplines that hold great promise for the advancement of cutting-edge research and development in biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences. Research and advances in these two areas influence board ranges of medical and engineering fields. The journal provides a common platform for the cross-fertilisation of ideas, and aims to help shape scientific knowledge and medical achievements by bridging these two very important and complementary disciplines into an interactive and attractive forum.

13 May 2008

Recent advances in grid technologies provide the ability to aggregate geographically-distributed resources into a single integrated computing platform. A variety of heterogeneous distributed resources, such as clusters, PCs, workstations, data storage devices or specific scientific instruments, are utilised and shared in grid computing systems. Computational resources, storage, memory, and bandwidth are complemented with content-oriented input from databases and web services. Such systems may operate in a predefined and centrally organised manner, or coordination may be conducted in a self-organised, decentralised manner.

Recently, an emerging research area for grid computing has seen a change from widely distributed resources sharing for data-intensive problems to service-oriented computation, collaboration, and virtual organisation. Therefore, the discovery and integration of grid resources and services on Internet has become convenient and flexible in terms of the combination of grid computing and web services used in various grid applications.

This special issue aims to foster state-of-the-art research in the area of grid computing and applications and is expected to focus on all aspects of grid technologies and to present novel results and solutions to solve various problems and challenges in grid platforms. The special issue will additionally select high quality papers from the 5th Workshop on Grid Technologies and Applications (WoGTA’08) to be held in Taiwan, December 2008.

We encourage the submission of innovative and mature results in designing, analysing, and developing grid technology, services, and applications. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

Recent decades have witnessed the significant development in biomedical robotics from fundamental research to commercialisation development, evaluation and feasibility studies. Robotics, initially brought in as computer-integrated systems for surgical interventions, has been emerging into a wider range of areas including image-guided therapy and rehabilitation robotics in the macro world. More recently, as biology digs into molecular level studies, robotics has also entered a new era in the micro world. Capable of manipulating from meter-sized humans to micrometer-sized cells, robotics plays a unique role in biomedicine, along with the advances in computer science, transducers, materials, imaging, and MEMS, etc.

The objective of this special issue is to bring together a variety of exciting research projects in the cutting edge of applying robotics technology in the broadest sense to biomedical applications. By sharing state-of-the-art research with the robotics community, it is hoped that innovative research ideas and opportunities will be inspired for the existing and emerging biomedical robotic areas.

High quality research papers dealing with fundamental issues as well as applied problems are solicited. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of biomedical robotics, papers presenting information across several disciplines are particularly welcome.

Research and technology developments at the atomic, molecular or macromolecular levels have the potential to provide a fundamental understanding of phenomena and materials at the nanoscale and to create and use structures, devices and systems that have novel properties and functions because of their small and/or intermediate size. Nanomanufacturing encompasses processes aimed at building nanoscale structures, devices and systems either in one, two or three dimensions.

Critical issues of nanomanufacturing play an important and increasing role in helping to increase the speed of the development cycle time, improve reliability, reduce process variability, and increase overall product and process quality. The goal of this special issue of is to publish the current state-of-the-art in nanomanufacturing systems, processes and simulation, including selected papers from the 6th International Symposium on Nanomanufacturing to be held in Athens, Greece, November 12th – 14th 2008

Subject coverage includes, but is not limited to, topics that address:

Nanomaterial production and integration

Metrology, sensing and characterization

Manipulation and actuation

Instrumentation, tooling, equipment

Modelling, simulation and control

Design, optimization and control

NEMS and MEMS nanomanufacturing

Socio-economic aspects of nanomanufacturing

Nanomanufacturing in industry

Research that explores the development of new statistical designs to meet novel challenges in emerging technologies for nanomanufacturing is particularly welcome.

Important DatesDeadline for submission of manuscripts: 30 November 2008Communication of peer reviews to authors: 30 December 2008Deadline for revised manuscripts: 31 May 2009

Services computing has emerged rapidly as an exciting new paradigm that offers a challenging model of service computing and poses fascinating problems regarding distributed resource management, ranging from information sharing to cooperative computing. This special issue is intended to foster state-of-the-art research in the area of integration of multimedia and mobility services (MMS), including the topics of collaboration environment, implementation and execution on real-world architectures, and novel applications associated with this new paradigm.

The published papers are expected to present high quality results for tackling problems arising from the ever-growing multimedia and mobility services. This special issue will serve as a landmark source for education, information, and reference to professors, researchers and graduate students interested in updating their knowledge about or active in MMS.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

4 May 2008

The first issue of International Journal of System of Systems Engineering has just been published. The journal covers the evolution and current developments in the field of system of systems and systems engineering concepts, with emphasis on the implications of the fact that new developments on technical and non-technical systems are merging. This perspective acknowledges the complexity of the current man-made, ecological as well as societal systems, their interfaces and socio-economic perspectives, in parallel with different space-time scales, as well as the reflexive characteristic of human systems.

The first issue of International Journal of Sustainable Strategic Management has just been published. It deals with organisational and economic sustainability and papers blend issues associated with market sustainability (i.e., sustaining superior organisational performance) and environmental sustainability (i.e., consistency with environmental and social concerns).

International Journal of Biomechatronics and Robotics - to begin publication in 2009 - will provide a cross-disciplinary platform for presenting the latest developments in biomechatronics and robot assistive technologies for medical and bio applications. It relates to the design of systems, devices and products for use as assistive tools when interacting with humans and biosystems. It will cover a wide range of areas including medical robotics, rehabilitation, assistive technology for elderly and disabled, robotic surgery aids and systems, operative planning tools, medical imaging and visualisation, simulation and navigation, virtual reality, intuitive command and control systems, haptics and sensor technologies.